or go down in flames
by conjurewithrisk
Summary: Harriet Dresden is worried about the Mantle and so is Kenneth Murphy. Gender AU.


**AN: Due to popular demand… Okay, maybe only three or so people have asked for it. I really love Murphy/Harry, okay. But, sadly, this is not my usual happy Dresden Files fic.**

**I also left my copy of Cold Days at home, which is being said because this takes place somewhere in that book. I also hope you can get a good idea of who is who.**

**Taylor Swift inspired because…yeah, just because.**

**Warning for some language.**

**Disclaimer**: I'm 4'8 and less than a hundred pounds—dude, I'm more Murphy than Butcher.

**Title**: or go down in flames

**Word Count**: 875

**Summary**: Harriet Dresden is worried about the Mantle and so is Kenneth Murphy. Gender-Bended.

* * *

"What's your next trick, Dresden?"

I blinked. "What?"

Kenneth was standing in the kitchen. He was leaning over the granite countertop, feigning interest in what was in the cabinets above the spice rack. "I said," he repeated. "What's your next trick? Seeing that you've come back to life, I'm sure that everything else is a piece of cake." He closed the doors and turned to face me, his pale blue eyes appeared more like ice under the low lights.

Guilt and the Mantle clashed ugly against each other. I looked down at my feet, my stockings, like my blue evening gown, were torn and bloodied from the fight at the Botanic Gardens. "I think most of my tricks would be banned at birthday parties."

"You're really back this time?" Kenneth leaned against the countertop, watching me carefully. "It's because of Mab, isn't?"

I shuddered at the memory of waking up to see vines under my skin. While the PT sessions were gruesome and horrifying in their own way, but whatever those things were, I was going to have nightmares about vines for ages. Heck, I had a bad enough track record with magical plants already. Those things were right up there with the Chlorofiend in terms of creepiness.

"I was too valuable to lose." I cracked a thin smile, as if to say _'Look at me! I'm too pretty to die! Even the bad guys don't want me down for long'. _

"And now you're her lackey." Kenneth pushed himself off the counter and walked to me. "The great Harriet Dresden, protector of Chicago, is now The Queen of Air and Darkness' knight."

"I'm still me," I said softly. His words struck something ugly inside of me. I knew how the Mantle worked; I knew it could influence me in subtle ways, and Kenneth knew firsthand about how that worked. He and I had both been whammied in the past, but were able to walk away back then with some mental scaring.

But this was different. The Mantle was on a whole other level compared to the love spell, Mab's tampering, and Kenneth's encounter with the Nightmare. The Mantle might as well be a living, breathing thing, granting me having full control of my body again and with some extra perks. The Winter Mantle was _old_; it could adapt and find other ways of changing me. It had happened to Slate and to others before me.

All my life people had been trying to force me into being someone that I was not: DuMorne with being his slave, the Council with making me a scapegoat, Lash with becoming an servant of the Fallen…the list went on and now it stopped with Mab feeling entirely sure about me becoming her Knight, her weapon of choice that would strike down and do whatever she so pleased.

Even death couldn't worm me out of the deal.

I was scared.

As if sensing this, or if my face was that transparent, Kenneth touched my cheek with the back of his hand. "Oh, Harry," he said. "I know you are, and that's what worries me."

"I'm still me," I repeated. I unintentionally felt the trickle of power that those words had, the grand statement of my independence that meant absolutely nothing to the Mantle. "I'm me. _Fuck_, Kenneth, what am I supposed to do? I can't let Mab win this."

"I don't want to lose you either," he said. "Harry, no matter what happens, whatever Mab does to you, we're not going to give up." He stubbornly tilted his chin to look at me dead-on in the face, risking the chance of having a Soul Gaze with me. "Not without a fight, you hear me?"

Right. I closed my eyes and focused on what made me _me_. My sister Tara, how our sisterhood flourished despite the backdrop of war; the Alphas and how their lives were growing, even expanding; Carmen, Luccio, and my friends with the Wardens; Sanya and the Carpenter family.

_Maggie_.

I thought of my daughter, my last connection to Stefan, something that was good in my life until everything had hit the fan. My little girl that might as well be an orphan because what I had done.

The faces of my friends and family—Ebenezer, Elliot, Butters, and more whirled around the inside of my brain, all things that tethered me, my support group.

I opened my eyes and saw Kenneth.

A year had changed a lot.

His hair was shorter, bristly even, with more noticeable stands of gray in the gold. The smile and laugh lines were fewer, draining the brightness from his eyes. His face was harder, more drenched in the years of fighting than it had been before. He had a year of facing down nightmares without me, feeling responsible to hold the city on his shoulders.

He wasn't the same beat cop that I had met on a bridge. I wasn't the same rundown wizard either.

He was different and so was I.

I leaned into Kenneth's touch; the feel of warm human skin and the familiarity of him made me think of home.

I covered his hand with mine. "Make sure I don't go anywhere, okay?"

"Wouldn't dream of it," he said.


End file.
